"You'll shoot your eye out..."

Those words of warning to young Ralphie Parker in "A Christmas Story" flashed through my mind today...

It was the Christmas Eve get-together for my in-laws. I like my in-laws, which is probably weird to begin with, but the other weird thing is that they like me, too. They think I'm this nice, clean-cut, witty guy whose great with kids and a real shark at 42. So basically, they see exactly what I want them to see.

But I digress...

I was playing with the children of my wife's cousin, one of whom had received a Nerf gun that shoot darts with Velcro on the tips. We made up a type of dodge-ball/dart kinda game, and I was teaching them the finer points of dodging...

...when I shot my eye out... sorta...

I had pulled the trigger, but my thumb was blocking the plunger that shot the dart. I was confused, so I turned the gun to look at the barrel. By doing so, I moved my thumb from its inhibitive position, thereby freeing the dart (tipped with Velcro, remember?) to complete its destiny and hit me dead on in the left eye.

"Ow... damn...", I thought. "I just shot my eye out..."

Well, my eye is still there, really, but I lost a nice chunk of eyeball skin to the Velcro. About 1/4 inch square, right above my pupil, still in the brown part of my iris. The bad part is that I shot myself in the eye, but the good part is that I missed the pupil and can still see out of it. But...

Ow...

Now I have a patch over my eye to keep me from messing with it until it heals. My depth perception is way off, which makes for great fun when reaching for my beer. It takes me two or three tries before I actually grab it, so then I hang onto it for a while... not wanting to go back through the hassle of figuring out where it is, exactly.

The moral of the story is:

Don't freakin aim any freakin gun at your freakin face!

Comments

Jon's picture

Man, and all I got was the "You'll shoot your eye out!" T-shirt from Kohls... I guess that's better than a shot in the eye!

doug-doug the mighty's picture

... now you can add a bullet point to your resume:

-- pirate!

So this now makes you a purported Parker-ersh pices-practicing pagan-preacher-patch primped proto pirate purveying page/portal planning and perspective, prescriptive personal pathway persuasion, and prophecies of paranormal planar influence with a parental partiality.

In short, you are full of "p".

Hope the eye gets better soon!

MacTrash_1's picture

At least they didn't make you wear the pink Bunny suit.....

Reverend Darkness's picture

DDTM, you have won the Reverend Darkness Alliteration Award for 2005. I'll have to award the assonance sometime next week.

(My wife just commented that you had WAY too much time on your hands)

Wink

ahhhh, life imitates art.

Now just don't swear, or you'll end up with soap in your mouth.

doug-doug the mighty's picture

...(My wife just commented that you had WAY too much time on your hands)

;)

Puh-lease. Wink